Sierra once again revamps a classic. Caesar II was one of my
personal favorite colonization,
expansion, city building style games ever. It was addictive,
entertaining, and even to some
extreme educational. Caesar III takes on the original game
idea and expands it with more
depth, improved graphics, and many other new features.

Once again it takes place in the time of the Romans, with you
starting out as a lowly lord
with a small town and gradually builds you up till you have
huge bustling cities with
thousands of people and tons of different buildings, markets,
and trade routes.

It can be compared to Seven Kingdoms, Age of Empires, Sim
City, and Civilization at various
levels of the game. You build up your cities much the same
way you would in Sim City. Since
this is in the Roman times, sometimes it will require armies to
keep the enemies at bay. Its
graphically similar to Sim City, although battles are done more
along the lines of a real
time strategy game like AoE was.

It's quite detailed and in depth. You're constantly trying to
make sure you've got enough
housing, that the people are happy, that they're being fed, and
make sure you're not losing
money. It's quite a handful, but it makes the game challenging
and entertaining. You need to
build up thriving markets for your people while setting up tax
collection to bring in some
income. Trading is also crucial for bringing in an income, it's
much easier to take money
from other cities than it is from your own. It's filled with all the
usual aspects that a
city would have, from fires to crime to disease, and it's up to
you to cope with it. You
also need to build a military to protect yourself from attack
because once those enemies
start coming it's hard to keep rebuilding and make a profit at
the same time.

While it may be a little bit heavy handed on the management
side, it does really adhere to
the hardcore civilization buff that loves being able to control
every aspect of his
development. It definitely might not be as exhilarating as the
latest first person shooter,
but it's addictive and will definitely keep those who come
interested engrossed in the game
for hours at a time. The combat aspect can get a little
frustrating. You're supposed to use
formations in order to attack the enemy. It seemed to get a
little disorganized quickly and
your units all wouldn't be attacking.

Each of your peasants and workers will talk to you, although
they're not all unique, but it
is really cool to be able to get feedback from any person at any
given time just by clicking
on them. When you've got hundreds of people scurrying
around your city it makes it feel like
you're really part of the game. The music is quite good. Sierra
usually does a decent job
of creating music to fit the theme and the mood of the game.

It has two different styles of play, campaign and scenario. I'm
sure you're familiar with
these two styles, scenario being a single mission, while a
campaign's more of a career. It
also includes a City Builder for creating your own cities. This
should add a little replay
to the game once you finish beating everything else which
might take you a little while.
Unfortunately, there's no multiplayer, but in the style of the
game, it's perfectly
acceptable.

I was very much entertained by this game as I was with Caesar
II. Sierra has put some fine
effort in to detailing and retooling a classic game in to
something much better. My only
major complaint is the campaigns just seem way too hard.
People were saying they were
getting stuck after the third campaign mission. I for one was
stuck for quite some time on
the fourth mission. As I had said earlier, you REALLY need to
watch your cash and make sure
to manage wisely. It's the only key to success.

Highs: Built on an already classic game, great speech, good
console and layout